Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Misinterpretations
Posted By Randy on April 10, 2013
Well said Albert, even if you didn’t actually say that.
There is a saying that became popular in the dark and misty days of computer programming that defined the quality of output as a function of input – “Garbage in, garbage out.”
Such an irony that this simple and clear philosophy would have been present at the infancy of the single most prolific and significant tool of the current era, and yet still, we have facebook – a social phenomenon I maintain stands as incontrovertible proof that putting an infinite number of Monkeys in front of an infinite number of keyboards will never yield anything approximating Shakespeare.
On the back of the phenomenon that is “social networking”, regardless of platform, rides another – the “meme“. Derived from the Greek mimëma, “something imitated”, and credited to Richard Dawkins in 1976, the meme is best known today in the form of freely distributed and all too often inaccurate and/or inappropriate expressions on the part of the distributor of pretension to wisdom, education, humour, and the existence of any sort of character. This is not to say that such memes are never without merit – that disapproving cat never seems to get old – but their incessant use as a means of spreading sappy philosophies of life by people who insist on living lives of inadequacy by doing everything in direct opposition to what their meme du jour says, got old the day before it left the gate. This last is rendered all the more onerous by the seemingly inevitable trend of people responding to the posting of such tripe with the comment, “SO true!”
Worst of all is the revisionist history that is finding its way into meme land. Case in point, the quite understandable Albert Einstein “statement” at the top of this piece. Quotations are routinely attributed to notable personages who never made them, more or less correctly quoted but wrongly attributed, or so paraphrased as to lose all original meaning regardless of who gets the blame.
A shining example of this is a line laid at the feet of that icon of manipulative infamy, Niccolò Machiavelli – “The end justifies the means.”
Not unlike The Bible, taken at face value a philosophy like that can be used to justify pretty much anything – except that’s not what Machiavelli said, or meant.
The actual quote is from his book The Prince, first published in print in 1532, and more specifically Chapter XVIII titled Concerning The Way In Which Princes Should Keep Faith:
Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.
So what he actually said is, “… in the actions of all men … one judges by the result.”
Not quite the same thing is it?
I have a copy of The Prince somewhere on a shelf.
Books are good since we can verify, somewhat, what was said or written. The internet searches on yield information that was inputed. GIGO still applies, witnessed by results of Global Warming claims, all based on computer program predictions, programs that be altered to produce conflicting results. Sorry about the sidetracking.
Your final point is well taken. A tree is judged by it's fruit.